Page 107 of Puck Your Feelings

"MORNING," I MUMBLE, eyes still closed, smile already spreading across my face like butter on hot toast.

Must be early as shit. I don't remember hearing any of Kane's seventeen thousand precisely timed alarms. Instead, I got woken up by the delicious soreness in my ass—the best and only appropriate wake-up call, if you ask me. Nothing says "good morning" quite like the physical reminder that you got spectacularly fucked last night.

Silence answers me.

I crack open one eye, then both, blinking against the sunlight streaming through the cabin's cheap blinds. Kane's sitting on his bunk—not beside me where I left him after we passed out in a sweaty, satisfied heap—already dressed in a plain gray t-shirt and basketball shorts. His eyes are glued to his phone, thumbs hovering over the screen like he's composing a message he can't quite commit to.

"Hi. Hey," he finally says.

There’s something different in his tone.

His voice sounds like it's been run through a meat grinder and reassembled by someone who's only heard human speech described second-hand. It's the robot voice—the one I haven't heard since before... well, before everything.

I sit up, suddenly feeling exposed despite the fact this man literally had his dick inside me not eight hours ago. I yank the sheet around my waist, a flimsy shield against whatever hurricane is brewing.

"You okay?" I ask, even though it's painfully obvious he's about as okay as a goldfish in a blender.

Kane finally looks up, and Jesus tap-dancing Christ, his face. It's like someone hit the factory reset button overnight. The warm, passionate man who whispered filthy encouragements in my ear as he fucked me senseless has been replaced by Cold Robot Kane 1.0—face completely shut down, expression locked up tight.

"We need to talk," he says, and my stomach plummets faster than my career prospects after the podcast incident.

"That's never good." I try for light, but it comes out strangled.

He can't even look at me. His eyes dart everywhere—the floor, the window, the ugly moose painting on the wall—anywhere but at my face.

It's not that he won't look at me. He can't.

And suddenly I get it. The realization slams into me like a blindside check.

"I knew it," I say, something hot and ugly rising in my chest. "I fucking knew it."

"Knew what?" he asks, still doing his best impression of a man who finds the cabin's floorboards absolutely fascinating.

"You regret it," I spit out. "I knew—"

"I don't." he interrupts, finally meeting my eyes for one brief, electric moment. "I don't regret it. I don't regret a single second. I want you to remember that."

His words should be comforting, but they land like a grenade with the pin already pulled.

"Rememberthat?" My voice rises. "What do you—"

"Riley."

First name fucking basis.

Anger bubbles inside me, molten and vicious. I know what's coming. I don't know how I know, but I know it before Kane can even form the words. It's written in every rigid line of his body, in the careful distance he's maintaining, in the way he's already dressed like he's planning his escape.

"I don't think..." Kane starts, then trails off. Coward.

I stand up, keeping the sheet wrapped around my waist like the world's saddest toga. "Say it, then," I challenge, my voice harder than I've ever heard it.

He takes a deep breath, squares his shoulders like he's about to block a slap shot. "I don't think we should do this. You and I? We're... teammates. It would—"

"Well, that's some fresh bullshit." I cut him off, unable to stomach another word of what is clearly a pre-rehearsed speech. I start frantically searching the cabin floor for my pants—any pants, at this point. I'm not having this conversation with my dick out.

"Riley—" he tries again, and hearing my name in his mouth just makes everything worse.

"Don't Riley me right now, Kane," I snap, locating a pair of sweats under the bed and yanking them on.